


Can't Stand The Heat? Burn Down The Kitchen

by A_Cold_Wind_Blows



Series: Spider-Arya [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Spider-Gwen (Comics)
Genre: Arya Stark is Spider-Gwen, F/M, Gen, Marvel Universe, superhero au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-08
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2019-01-30 05:58:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12647517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Cold_Wind_Blows/pseuds/A_Cold_Wind_Blows
Summary: What do you do when the guy you're crushing on is more interested in your superhero alter-ego?





	Can't Stand The Heat? Burn Down The Kitchen

**Author's Note:**

> The adventures of Spider-Arya continue. Gendrya fans should like this one.

He awoke to a loud knocking, his eyes bleary and frenzied as he saw a playlist of BMX tricks playing on a loop on his smart TV. He had a vague recollection of searching “bike bloopers” while dropping fried potatoes and onions all over his shirt. The knocking became even louder, rattling his hangover. Only to end the agony did Gendry finally tap the touch screen mounted on his nightstand and unlock the door.

“Finally! I’ve been trying to wake you for fifteen minutes!” Mya shouted as she stepped into Gendry’s room and immediately tripped on a pile of his thermal shirts. “Ugh, Gendry, you need to take better care of your things. And would you please put some clothes on?”

Glancing down at himself, Gendry realized he was naked, and as much as he could (and had in the past) stare at his chiseled, very well-earned six-pack all day, he figured Mya wouldn’t share his enthusiasm. Turning her back on him, Gendry felt safe to flick away his bedsheets so he could put on some underwear and a wife-beater. By then Mya saw he was somewhat clothed and returned to her nagging.

“You were out all night again,” she said without needing to ask. “Even though I asked you to take it easy, you seem hellbent on doing exactly the opposite of that. Hey!”

Gendry was just zipping up the fly on his jeans when Mya shouted, bringing his attention back to his sister. For as long as he had known her, Mya always worn band t-shirts and dirty denim overalls, often with spots of car grease on her face. Ever since she met her new fiancé though, their lives had changed entirely in both big and little ways, a little way being that she was almost always wearing a lab coat and pantsuit, even now.

“I’m talking to you,” Mya said. “Are you listening to me?”

“Yeah, yeah, you don't want me to be my mom,” Gendry said, rolling his eyes as he started grabbing his keys and his phone. “What else is new?”

Mya grabbed his wrist and yanked, stopping Gendry in his tracks. He glanced at her hand on him and as always she knew his mood and let go, though she also stepped in front of his door so he couldn’t leave.

“What is going on with you? I know this hasn’t been the easiest transition, for either of us, and I know you…” Mya seemed hard pressed for words but when Gendry tried to move she pushed him back. “I know you didn’t ask for this, but that’s not an excuse for your poor behavior. You’re an adult now and dad is gone. You have to start taking responsibility for yourself.”

“I am ready. It’s you who isn’t ready,” Gendry said, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “You and Beric and everyone else. Unlike you, I actually want to do this. I understand what is going on. And I like to blow off some steam sometimes, so what? There are worse things I could be doing. I promise you that.”

Mya was about to retaliate until Gendry’s phone started ringing. He answered it without looking at the caller ID. Whatever he had to do to get away from this annoying conversation.

“You got Gendry, who is this?”

“Thank god! Gendry, there’s a problem. Can you come by the shelter later?” Hot Pie’s words were squeaky and quivery over the phone, his voice hoarse as if he’d been shouting. “I wouldn’t normally bother you with this sort of thing but I didn’t know who else to turn to-”

“Oh wow, this sounds really important!” Gendry said for Mya’s benefit. “I will make sure to come down there right now. Meet me in say, fifteen minutes?”

After he hung up, Mya just shook her head and crossed her arms like mom used to do. Still she let him go, shouting after him to remember that he’d promised to go on a blind date. Gendry said he would remember even as he started coming up with excuses to get out of this thing. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate Mya going out on a limb for him, setting him up with someone a week after he’d gotten drunk with her and confessed that he was looking for something more serious. He just thought she missed the mark with this one.

Because no matter how cool, or cute, or amazing Arya Stark might be, she wouldn’t be able to hold a candle to the one girl that Gendry couldn’t get out of his head.

*****

Puffing out her cheeks on a long exhale, Arya gave her neck a little crack before she took the first step down the stairs to the living room. Sansa was scrolling through her phone on the couch while Jon sat next to her, looking bored with his elbow on the armrest and his cheek against his palm.

He spotted Arya first, giving Sansa a gentle nudge with his leg. She looked up and immediately dropped her phone into the lap of her sundress to clap. The clapping was followed by some sort of horrible noise that was emitting from her mouth that Arya realized was squealing.

“Oh my god babe! You look gorgeous!”

Arya rolled her eyes even as she blushed and couldn’t stop the small, self-pleased smile that came to her face. The dress was her own and not borrowed from Sansa, so it actually fit really well. It was an A-line, according to Sansa, that ended above her knees but not too far above, with a pink and white patchwork pattern that Arya thought looked very bright against her darker-hair. In a nice way. She’d paired the dress with some dark blue, slinky, skyscraper heels, keeping in mind how tall she knew Gendry to be. The make-up and the French-up-do in her hair were all Sansa’s doing.

“Look Jon, doesn’t she just look so stunning?” Sansa asked, clearly teeing him up for an answer that he wasn’t at all prepared to give.

“Right, yeah! Wow Arya! I’ve never seen you looking so…” Jon seemed unable to think of anything so he just gave a little chuckle and brushed his hand over his stubble in a cute way. Somehow that made Arya feel even better than any words he might have said. “Just wow.”

“You don’t think it’s trying too hard?” Arya asked, brushing her hand down the hem nervously even though she was wearing spanx underneath. “It feels like I’m trying to look really good for him, and maybe that will scare him off?”

“Girl, if he does anything but drool and thank his lucky stars that he gets to spend time wooing you in that outfit, then I’m sorry, but I think it means he’s gay,” Sansa said with a shrug. “I don’t care if that’s offensive, you’re a tasty dish and he better treat you as such.”

Arya blushed again, and even though she wanted to tell Sansa to shut up, that she didn’t need her weird overly-aggressive hyping, the shy nerd with no friends in middle school that still lived in Arya’s heart drank deeply of Sansa’s praise. Even though she normally hated dresses and found that a lot of clothing options and fits were purposefully built in a way to frustrate her petite body shape, this dress had been the exception. She just felt so confident in it. The shoes were a little uncomfortable.

“Are you nervous?” Jon asked. Unlike Sansa, he had a better idea of what had gone on with Mycah and Edric and how crappy she was at dating them, even before her spider powers.

“No, I don’t think so,” Arya said. “In a weird way, I feel like I have crib notes on the guy or something. I mean, technically I’ve met him before, he just doesn’t know it.”

“He might behave differently with you though,” Jon said. “After all, it’s one thing to talk to Spider-Woman, someone he knows could kick his ass with two fingers. It’s another with you.”

“He won’t. Gendry is very genuine,” Sansa perked up.

Even though she’d only met Gendry officially the one time, when he and Sansa were attacked by the Rhino at Kirby Coffee, Sansa had been going on and on for days about how great and handsome Gendry was. Arya had her doubts that Sansa’s motives were pure in doing this, but it did reassure her a bit that Gendry would be a good guy. After all, if he’d acted creepy or something, Sansa would have most definitely sensed that. Probably.

They were set to meet for dinner at 5 before seeing a movie, something artsy and low stakes so they could whisper to each other during, at least according to Sansa. Even though she had been the one to ask for this set-up, Arya felt intrusive impulses urging her to cancel this whole thing before she made a fool of herself. It had taken a lot of time to build herself up and decide to do this and actually commit to it.

Which made what happened next all the more frustrating.

“Oh no…” Sansa said after her phone chimed with a text. “I’m so sorry Arya.”

“What is it?” she asked, her heart already going into freefall.

“Gendry just cancelled. He says he’s really sorry, but that something important came up that he had to deal with. He’s offering to reschedule though.”

Jon was careful not to say anything, gauging her reaction. Arya both appreciated and hated that.

“It’s totally cool,” she said as goose pimples ran up and down her arms. “He’s a busy guy, I get it. Maybe next time.”

Not bothering to listen as both Jon and Sansa tried to say different versions of the same empty reassurances, Arya rushed back upstairs, her dumb heels catching at one point and causing her to faceplant into the second-floor carpet. Swinging through buildings at Mach speeds, no problem, but this? Arya decided then and there that heels were invented by the patriarchy and she wouldn’t have anything to do with them in the future. She would wear flats from now on. And if Gendry or any other man wanted to see how heels made her legs look great and her butt look even better, then they could go suck an egg.

Arya whipped the dress over her head and threw it without any ceremony at her laundry basket before laying face first in bed. A nap might be a better use of her time anyway than stupid Gendry Waters.

She absolutely would not reminisce about the first time she’d saved him from a collapsing building. He’d looked so cute and vulnerable, yet unswerving at the same time. He’d kept his cool in the face of insanity. At the time he was a blip on her radar but one that lingered in the back of her head like a catchy lyric to a song she had forgotten. 

When she saw him again at Kirby Coffee, and realized he was her blind date, it was like returning to an old book. Some parts were familiar while others were discovered for the first time.

The obvious signs of his beauty were still there, though more noticeable without all the dust and rubble caking his face. She wondered what it would feel like to run her palms over the dark hair on his face that made his jaw look so much sharper. His shoulders were almost a little too broad, Arya sometimes wondered if she would look silly standing next to him but also how easily he might carry her in his arms. 

Then there were his eyes. Arya had always thought Edric’s eyes were beautiful, uniquely colored and always so earnest, but Gendry’s eyes had a different allure. The soft blue color obscured a dark and mysterious intent, like he had a little joke that he couldn’t wait to tell you, but he wanted to see if you could figure it out first.

More than his looks though, their second meeting made Arya realize how aggressive Gendry could be. Usually she wasn’t into that sort of thing, being the one who asked both Mycah and Edric out herself, but something about the way that Gendry approached her worked. It was like his confidence, his insistence that he get to know Spider-Woman better, came not from a place of desire or greed but wonder. When he was all but asking her out that day, propositioning a masked vigilante who was wanted by the police in broad daylight, Arya couldn’t help but be impressed by his boldness.

He was desperate for her and she liked that. A lot.

“I’m such a loser,” Arya groaned into her pillow.

Jon burst in with his phone and immediately started shouting about a code blue, the code that he and Arya had come up with to covertly discuss Spider-Woman things. Even though she was just in her sleeping tank top and spanx, Arya was unconcerned with Jon’s unexpected presence, considering she practically slept at his place half of any given week.

“Is it a supervillain?” Arya asked, already hoping that she could punch some people to work out all this frustration and disappointment.

“No, something way more alarming,” Jon panted, having run up the stairs to give her this news. “Someone is trying to back-trace your tracking spider! Arya, someone is trying to hack into your suit.”

*****

After Jon came down from his hysterics, they figured out a way to back-trace the hack. It turned out that the signal wasn’t even being shielded, and after a quick trip back to Jon’s dorm for some supplies, Arya had a signal interceptor built out of an old walkie-talkie in her hand as she swung through Midtown. Their would-be hacker seemed to be in Manhattan.

“When you meet him, don’t just immediately go to beating the crap out of him. I want to know how he was able to get past the firewalls I built.”

“Jon, do I seem like the type of girl to jump first and ask questions later?” Arya said. “You know what? Don’t answer that.”

Eventually she pinpointed the source of the signal to a metallic high-rise with a roof garden. At first Arya let her suit scan the area for any entrances or optimal flight paths to get into the building, until she spotted something. There was someone on the roof. From this distance it was hard to tell who it was but they seemed to be alone. A picnic table that didn’t match any of the garden’s other furniture was decorated with plates of food, flowers, and a balloon.

When Arya realized the identity of their mysterious tracker, she became even more confused and annoyed. She told Jon that she would talk to him later and shut off the comm before he could complain or try to convince her otherwise. Arya had a feeling that she wanted this conversation to be private.

He barely jumped when she landed. His hand brushed the side of his suit jacket in a way that was either a threat of a weapon or a nervous adjustment of his belt buckle. The dark navy color of his jacket matched his slacks and complemented the color of his eyes in a subtle way. There was a crisp-white shirt underneath, tie and all, though the knot was now disheveled and loosened from impatient tugging. Overall, he looked quite dapper.

“Hi,” Gendry said, smiling in a way that almost melted Arya’s frozen stone of a heart. Almost.

“So you’re the one trying to hack into my stuff,” she replied, keeping her tone cool and unimpressed. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Only a creep like you would think that was a cool way of getting my attention.”

His smile melted a bit but otherwise Gendry took it in stride. “Well, I thought about challenging a supervillain to a fight on Twitter, but I figured you’d prefer this.” He followed up his theory with two champagne flutes that had been sitting on the picnic table, the bubbles long ago dissipated. “I thought maybe we could have a few drinks, look out at the city, and try to get to know each other-”

“Ew.”

Arya took a little too much pleasure in the way Gendry’s cool demeanor shattered with just a word from her. His face was flush, his mouth scrunched up in a frown as he tried clearing his throat, putting away the champagne flutes. He unbuttoned his suit jacket with one hand as he leaned back against the table, crossing his arms. His eyes were a little more guarded now, a little more uneasy with the situation, and ironically that only served to make him more attractive in Arya’s eyes. She liked it when the guy wasn’t so obviously trying.

“Okay, we don’t have to do that.” Gendry shrugged. “Why don’t we go more your speed, and you can tell me about yourself. No pressure.”

“So that’s it?” Arya chuckled. “You hack into my firewalls and breach my suit’s tracking software, something no one else has done before, just to ask me on a date? You do realize how pathetic that is, right?”

“Ouch!” Gendry pressed his hands to his chest like he was compressing a wound. “That one smarts. Although, my sister says that guys should always make themselves a little pathetic, for a girl to know he’s serious. I don’t think she meant it quite like that but-”

“You’re wasting my time,” she interrupted. “If you don’t have anything to say to me other than cheap lines and thrift store gossip, then I’m going to leave.” Arya glanced at the basket of rolls, the plates of mini burritos, and the chopped vegetables with ranch dressing. When she saw the several 2-Liter bottles of soda, Arya realized how much food there was. “Jesus, were you expecting an army to come?”

“I didn’t know what you liked.”

“So you bought everything? You’re either too rich to have any sense or too desperate to ever have a shot with me.”

“Can’t it be both?” Gendry said, taking a step toward her. “Maybe money isn’t really an object to me right now, so I figured, why not go for broke in trying to impress you? And maybe the reason I went all out is because I know…”

He stepped closer.

“Know what?”

She found herself moving to close the gap as well.

“I know that… that you’re something special,” Gendry finally managed. “That I see all you’ve done, all you can do, and it drew my notice.”

“Oh, how fortunate for me,” Arya quipped.

His hand was suddenly on her waist and Arya did not know how to react. He seemed to sense that she was frozen, so he immediately retracted, but only a bit, the offending appendage hovering over where he’d touched her. He was waiting for her to say something or react in some way, but Arya couldn’t think of anything to do but stare in total social dysfunction. She noticed that her hip had never felt so cold without Gendry’s hand there.

Rather than pushing his luck, Gendry took her continued lack of reaction as offense and dropped his hand to his waist. They were standing a hair’s breadth from each other. When had that happened? How had she never noticed that cute nose? He fished a chrome-metallic tablet out of an inside pocket and set it on the table, the tracker Arya reasoned, before he shut it off.

“Look… you’re right, I’m a creepy fanboy. Totally fair call.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” Arya said without thinking.

"I’m sorry about all of this,” Gendry continued, gesturing behind him at the table of food and the various glass vases of flowers. “I wanted to make the best impression I could and I… perhaps... went overboard. I just wanted to tell you that there are… there are people out here, not just me, who get it.”

“Get what?”

“What you’re doing! It’s like, everyone generally understands that the world changed after the Incident, but you’re the only one who really gets it. Psychic powers, mutants, aliens, Iron Man, Inhumans; none of it matters. It’s all noise. People fighting each over the same stuff that they’ve always fought each other over throughout all of time. It’s like, the world didn’t change to them except now people wear costumes.”

“Okay, now I think you’re desperate AND crazy,” Arya said with a chuckle.

Gendry was on a roll though. “The Avengers, right? They think it’s all about diplomatic relations and U.N. charters and what’s the best way to keep all this crazy stuff under wraps and away from the public. Meanwhile, you continually prove that they’re wrong because here you are: just some random person who was given powers, probably through some freak accident that you couldn’t control, constantly being told by a hundred different people in a hundred different ways how and why you should use these gifts, and you don’t listen to any of them. You brush them all off and you do it with style.”

Arya realized this was the first time anyone had ever referred to her powers as a gift other than Jon.

“You’re a rebel. Not just in words but the real deal. In fact, I think you’re the only person in this whole crazy-ass city who is actually succeeding at making things better! Not just better for today, but better than they were before the sky fell down on New York.”

The last of his words were practically a whisper. Arya thought he was going in for the kiss until she remembered that she was wearing a mask. The look that Gendry was giving her frightened her in that same way that she had been frightened of her feelings for Mycah, when she first started liking boys. There was something serious and careful there, like he wasn’t just saying it for her but for himself too. His intensity was real.

Gendry seemed to sense the weird energy passing between them, retreating a step and brushing his hand over the back of his neck. Arya took the opportunity to regulate her breathing and look around the roof more, as if she would find anything that could hold her attention as long as this guy could.

“That’s quite a line,” Arya finally said, making him frown. “I guess… a speech like that deserves a few minutes of my time.”

Her words must have surprised him because Gendry didn’t seem to hear her until his face broke out into a freshly arrogant grin. As much as she hated how smarmy it made him look, like he’d successfully picked her up in a bar or some crap, she also couldn’t help but find it adorable. She was starting to glean how desperately Gendry had wanted this to go well and somehow that made Arya less nervous.

“Why don’t we sit?”

Arya nodded and planted herself at the picnic table across from Gendry, taking the offered champagne flute and lifting the bottom of her mask up so she could take a sip. Clearly it had been out for a while as it was incredibly flat, but it was sweet and crisp like apples so Arya decided she liked it.

“Do you like fondue?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please comment and kudos, they give me life.


End file.
